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The tracker’s survival kit in the tangle of the web

Every day millions of Internet users tweet, like, comment and share content, generating a mammoth stream of conversation non-stop! Sifting through and making sense of this mass of data is a daily job and, to help us in this task, we have our secret weapons. Does the idea of becoming an expert web tracker appeal to you too? SIG’s very own trackers are offering you a completely free toolkit whether you’re just starting out or an old hand! What about you? What tools do you use? Share your tips with us on Twitter with the hashtag #SigLab!

Twazzup is a search engine for monitoring what topics are trending on Twitter in real-time. What do we like about this tool? Well, first the Tweets Per Hour (TPH) count which shows how fast a piece of information has spread, and second the tabs identifying the most influential, active or recent accounts. Our favourite feature is the possibility of obtaining extra information about each user – especially the list of his or her previous tweets on the same subject searched, by moving your mouse over his or her account. Keyhole is another tracking tool for Twitter … and Instagram too! Its advantages? Free data, the demographics option and above all the possibility to log in without needing to log in to a Twitter account. For an even more detailed picture, Tweetreach and Tweetbinder would also be worth checking out.

TweetDeck is one of the main dashboard apps for managing Twitter on the market. A cinch to use and accessible with your usual Twitter login, it is great for managing several accounts, working in a team, subscribing to lists or monitoring key words. We’re a fan of its real-time streaming option creating a tweet wall on a secondary screen, as well as the “notification” feature that can be configured depending on what you want to focus on (number of retweets or favourites) to be quick off the mark when it comes to emerging subjects.

Trends24.in can be used to monitor Twitter trends worldwide hour by hour. We like the logging of trending history over the past 24 hours as well as the regional zooms. We love the timeline and tag-cloud views.

EMM NewsBrief also gets the thumbs-up in our book. This is the European Commission’s monitoring tool that provides a detailed analysis of topics trending on the traditional media … and social networks alike! Updated every ten minutes, 24 hours a day, it presents the latest news and classifies it according to subject. A must-have in the tracker’s toolkit!

With Socialshare you can keep track of the most shared articles on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. The customisable side of this tool is what we like about it, which lets us choose our own criteria for defining how many shares are needed for an article to be considered popular. Which subjects are swiftly gaining traction on the French web can be identified from the real-time data and wide range of sources under the “Actualités Infos” (News) heading. For more details, you’ve also got the option of selecting several other theme headings, for example Culture, Digital or Sport. Filters, notifications and comparative sources can all be used to fine-tune your analysis: bonus!

One service the tracking unit uses a lot is Sharedcount, which shows at just a click of the mouse the number of times a single URL or group of URLs has been used on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and other major social networks. Looking for an alternative? See what you think of Webrankinfo.

Add the Youtube trends tab to the Youtube dashboard, and exploring the most popular videos shared on Facebook and Twitter over the past 24 hours, or the most popular videos viewed over the same period, has never been easier. We like that you can select an age group to delve deeper and understand what’s getting the attention of the different Internet user profiles. The same goes for Google Trends, which provides an overview of news stories trending right now and a graph plotting their popularity over the past 24 hours.

Are you after a Google Trends for the social networks? Well look no further, we’ve found a solution: Buzzsumo! This tool will find for you and display the most shared content across Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest or Google+. Do you want to communicate on a specific topic? Just type a few key words into Buzzsumo and your search will bring up a whole content list ranging from a simple article to a video, an infographic or an interview. Number of shares on the social networks, global count, follower profiles, filters … Buzzsumo gives you the complete lowdown on each content item and you can even export the data to Excel. The only downside? The tool’s only available in English…